


angels among us.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Angst, Christmas, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-11 00:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8945185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: It's that time of year again, and Dean's seeing angels everywhere.





	

It’s that time of year again, Dean’s seeing angels everywhere.

There’s an angel in a thrift store, over in Household Goods.  Sam’s over by men’s coats, looking for something with sleeves that will reach across his broad shoulders and all the way down to his wrists, and Dean’s already found two decent pairs of jeans so now he’s just puttering around the kitchen items, the baskets, the sets of chipped place settings and mismatched silverware.  Not really shopping.  Just looking.  And there’s an angel, just right there in front of him.  A chipped ceramic figurine, knelt in prayer, missing its clasped hands.  Someone’s discarded Christmas ornament.  

He doesn’t know why.  He never does.  But he reaches out and picks it up.  Turns it over in his hand.  The angel is small, so small.  It fits right there, tucked in his palm, he could wrap his fingers around and hold it inside his hand.

It’s just junk.  A broken angel kneeling with bowed head.  It makes Dean’s chest hurt, just looking at it.  

He doesn’t know why, he doesn’t know why.  But oh, it reminds Dean of him.

He keeps the angel in his palm and carries it up to the front, digs in his coat pocket until he finds seventy-five cents for it.  He carries it home with his fingers wrapped tight around it.  Dean doesn’t know why.  He never does.

\--

There’s a row of broken angels on the shelf over Dean’s bed.  He can’t stop finding them, can’t stop seeing them everywhere he turns.  He can’t stop saving them, bringing them home tucked away in his coat pocket or cradled between his palms.  He buys ceramic glue and paint and fixes them the best he can, but some angels, there’s nothing to do but set them up on the shelf anyway, and just love them the way they are.  

There are ceramic angels, silver angels, concrete angels that have weathered too long in the frost and rain, with cracks running across their faces and chips in their wings.  His angels are missing noses and fingers, wings and ears and harps and halos.

He steals them out of houses, when he’s working a case.  His boots make crunching noises stepping on broken glass, there’s blood on the wrists of his coat.  There’s a victim to find and a body to hide but all he can think of is the tiny angel knocked of the shelf when they smashed the window.  He doesn’t even put on gloves, he just crouches on his heels and moves aside the fragments of glass until he finds it.  A chip is missing, a piece of its wing.  

Dean puts it in his pocket to keep it safe until he can bring it home.

\--

It’s not even December yet, but there are angels everywhere, it seems like everywhere Dean looks there’s another Christmas song playing on the radio, another Salvation Army Santa ringing bells, another advertisement, another angel.  They’re all Hallmark and Lifetime-movie angels, fat babies with drooping cheeks and golden curls, long white robes and outstretched arms.  

Dean knows that’s not what angels really look like. Doesn’t even come close.  But there’s one on the clearance shelf at Wal-Mart, next to a busted package of ornaments and a few string of lights, an angel for the top of a Christmas tree.  Only no one will buy it, without a halo.  

And Dean knows, oh Dean knows it’s not him.  Not even close.  The cheeks are too pink and the curls are too long and he’s never known an angel to wear a robe.  

But the wings look right, somehow.  Sweeping up in an arc, with wingtips that touch.  And Dean knows saving this angel won’t bring him back.  But he puts in the angel in his shopping cart anyways.

They don’t buy a tree and even if they did, he wouldn’t put this angel on top of it.  But Dean has to keep them.  He has to believe that there are angels still on earth.  That he hadn’t just dreamed them up, fell in love.  He has to believe that miracles can happen.  That angels can fall and learn to fly again.  That angels can break and still be beautiful.  That angels can leave and come back.  

\--

Dean spends a night at a local bed and breakfast, sticking close to the lead on his case, and he wakes up staring at the room’s silver-and-pink wallpaper, a pattern of hearts and smiling fat cupids with harps and bows and arrows, angels with dimpled elbows and rosebud lips.   

Isn’t it charming? asks the concierge while Dean’s checking out.  Everybody loves that room, everyone who stays talks about our angels.

Used to, he would have laughed at the wallpaper for days, would have sent Sam a photo with a message that says Think this looks like our kind of thing?, but he can’t do it, now.  Can’t pretend that he didn’t smile when he’d opened his eyes and seen those angels dancing over his head.  Can’t pretend it didn’t remind him a little of what it’s like to wake up with an angel’s arms wrapped round your chest, to wake up with an angel’s hair tickling your lips.  

He can’t pretend he didn’t remind him of what it’s like to be in love.  

So he smiles and thinks about angels with dimpled elbows and angels with four o’clock shadows and he means it with all his heart when he says, Yes, yes, oh yes.  I love your angels.  I loved that room.  

\--

It’s that time of year, everyone sees angels everywhere, in the faces of the men and women behind the counters at soup kitchens, in the feel-good stories on the news every night.   He hears the word of God on the lips of strangers, that angels are out there doing their good works.  Performing miracles.  Saving lives.  Guiding lost souls home.  

He buys a coffee cup with a unsmiling cupid from a dollar store, with one fat hand propped up under its chin.  The kind of mug he’d have bought as a joke, just so he could fill it with coffee and set it on their kitchen table and hand it over to an angel with a bedhead and a deep frown between his eyes that won’t go away until he’s drained the cup and had another.  

The cashier rings him up, asks him if he’d like it wrapped in paper. To keep it safe, she says, so it won’t break before you get home.  He says Yes, that sounds good, and she asks him, with packing tape in her hands and wide earnest eyes, Are you a believer?  

A believer.  The kind of thing he’d used to make fun of, back before he’d known that an angel can fall to earth and kiss you senseless, that an angel can save your life and break your heart, before he’d known an angel was someone you could miss so badly it keeps you from sleeping some nights, when all you can do is turn on your light and look at the angels on the shelf over your head and pray to one you know can’t hear you anymore that he is all right, that he is safe, that he knows that you love him still.  

But Dean sees angels now, everywhere but in his arms, and he can’t pretend.  So he says around the lump in his throat and with every prayerful feeling locked deep in his soul, hoping that somewhere out there, someone is listening.  Yes, yes, oh yes.  I believe.

**Author's Note:**

> oh, I believe there are angels among us  
> sent down to us from somewhere up above  
> they come to you and me in our darkest hour  
> to show us how to live, teach us how to give  
> and guide us with the light of love


End file.
